Elizabeth's Campaign eBook

’While you’ve been away? Nothing
of the sort. He’s not crossed the threshold
since I turned him out six months ago. But he’s
coming all the same—­as mild as milk.’

‘Very good of him!’ said Elizabeth with
spirit.

‘That’s as you choose to look at it.
And as to everything else—­’

‘The catalogue?’

‘Gone to the crows!’ said the Squire gloomily.
’Levasseur took some references to look out
last week, and made twenty mistakes in as many lines.
He’s off!’

Elizabeth removed her hat and pressed her hands to
her eyes, half laughing, half aghast. Never had
anything been more welcome to the Squire than the
sheen of her hair in the semi-darkness. Mrs.
Gaddesden had once annoyed him by calling it red.

‘And the farms?’

’Oh, that I leave you to find out. I shovelled
all the letters on to your table, just as Pamela left
them.’

‘Pamela!’ said Elizabeth, looking up.
‘But where is she?’

The Squire held his peace. Mrs. Gaddesden drily
observed that she was staying with Mrs. Strang in
town. A bright colour spread in Elizabeth’s
cheeks and she fell silent, staring into the fire.

‘Hadn’t you better take your things off?’
said Mrs. Gaddesden.

Elizabeth rose. As she passed the Squire, he
said gruffly:

‘Of course you’re not ready for any Greek
before dinner?’

She smiled. ‘But of course I am. I’ll
be down directly.’

In a few more minutes she was standing alone in her
room. The housemaid, of her own accord, had lit
a fire, and had gathered some snowdrops for the dressing
table. Elizabeth’s bags had been already
unpacked, and all her small possessions had been arranged
just as she liked them.

‘They spoil me,’ she thought, half pleased,
half shrinking. ’But why am I here?
Why have I come back? And what do I mean to do?’

CHAPTER XIII

These questions—­’Why did I come back?—­What
am I going to do?’ were still ringing through
Elizabeth’s mind when, on the evening of her
return, she entered the library to find the Squire
eagerly waiting for her.

But the spectacle presented by the room quickly drove
out other matters. She stood aghast at the disorder
which three weeks of the Squire’s management
had brought about. Books on the floor and piled
on the chairs—­a dusty confusion of papers
everywhere—­drawers open and untidy—­her
reign of law seemed to have been wiped out.

‘Oh, what a dreadful muddle!’

The Squire looked about him—­abashed.

’Yes, it’s awful—­it’s
all that fellow Levasseur. I ought to have turned
him out sooner. He’s the most helpless,
incompetent idiot. But it won’t take you
very long to get straight? I’ll do anything
you tell me.’

He watched her face appealingly, like a boy in a scrape.
Elizabeth shook her head.

’It’ll take me a full day. But never
mind; we need not begin to-night.’